Study: Average premium hike is 76% in states without federal subsidies

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Study: Average premium hike is 76% in states without federal subsidies

Today there were conflicting federal rulings by federal appellate courts regarding The Affordable Care Act. One upheld the state subsidies in states without health care exchanges. The other struck them down. Better pray you don't find yourself in Mississippi where the health care premium could go up 94%. Here is the story from Marketwatch.com:

A side note on Tuesday’s U.S. Court of Appeals ruling, striking down subsidies for those who receive Obamacare in federal exchange states…

A study from Avalere Health shows that the average health-care premium increase for those who actually lose their subsidies would be 76%. The hike in premiums would be highest in Mississippi, where it would be roughly 94%, as well as Missouri, Georgia, Florida and Alaska.

The map shows just how much the increases are likely to be, and the decision could exempt many of the roughly 4.7 million people who received subsidies and enrolled via federal exchanges. Those who enrolled in states with their own exchanges are not subject to the ruling.

Thirty-six states currently use the federal exchange, but two of those — Idaho and New Mexico — are setting up their own marketplace. That means 16 states plus the District of Columbia will be operating their own exchanges in future years.

The GAO’s account of fictitious applicants obtaining subsidized coverage goes beyond a related problem that surfaced this spring and that the investigators also cited: The government may be paying incorrect insurance subsidies to a significant share of the 5.4 million Americans who signed up for health plans for this year through the federal marketplace.

The GAO testimony contains updates on that problem, saying that, as of mid-July, about 2.6 million “inconsistencies” existed among applicants who had chosen a health plan and that 650,000 of them had been resolved.

11 of 12 fictious applications were approved for subsidies, but were not properly screened for a number of factors to qualify for subsidies.

If this is an indication of how well the site is working that 2.6 million "inconsistencies" may really only be the tip of the iceberg.

If tax bills go out to recoup the ineligible subsidies, just before the 2016 elections, what would be the fallout? Would Obama have to whip out his pen to "forgive" all those taxes owed? Who will then pay for all of this? What happens to insurance rates when the safety net for the insurance companies disappears in 2015? The insurance companies will spread their losses over not just the exchange programs, but they will need to raise rates even for those policies outside the exchanges. Neither unions nor Ds corporate cronies will be very happy with that.

The estimated cost of Obamacare had already been pegged at $2 trillion (Obama said it would cost 1/2 that) before the CBO threw up its hands and said that after all Obama's changes, it was impossible to estimate the cost. (Perhaps our educational system just left this younger administration hopelessly mathematically challenged?)

Either we start over from scratch or we end up with single-payer.

Was this just incompetence on the part of those who wrote the bill, and those who never read it? Or, as both Obama and Reid indicated clearly, the ultimate goal was to be single-payer? It would appear that they also didn't care what it cost in human anguish for the insureds to get what they wanted? It appears that they also didn't care what it will cost health care providers (from device manufacturers to doctors) in order to reach the desired goal. How many lives will be lost due to the pursuit of that agenda as the medical care system drags through the muck of this mess-up?

And all of this so that everyone's medical care can be as good as that dispensed by the VA? The VA scandal keeps revealing how the bureaucracy there keeps protecting itself, not the veterans it's supposed to serve. Do we imagine that a system even larger and more expansive than the VA will really not have the same bureaucratic obstacles?

In his 2008 campaign, Obama had promised to fix the VA. If the fact that it had only gotten worse during his tenure, wold it have changed the outcome of the 2012 election? Would the voters have pressured their legislators to support the House's effort to defund Obamacare? How many legislators who lauded the law in 2010 would have been unseated as well?

Will the Washington Post encourage other MSM to start informing the public?

G.Clinchy@gmail.com"Know in your heart that all things are possible. We couldn't conceive of a miracle if none ever happened." -Libby Fudim

​I don't use the PM feature, so just email me direct at the address shown above.

Wasn't it so easy in the past... get a job that has a health benefit attached to the job... business gets good workers, the government then doesn't have to worry about you...

Make welfare a limited time, train people for jobs, get them off medicaid.

Yes Hospitals and Doctors sometime had to use collections to finally get paid, but it was better then Obamacare. At some point each and every business is going to say we no longer are going to provide Health Care benefits because Obamacare will take care of you... so you are going to lose another work benefit and be stuck with higher premiums.

This was set up to make windfall profit for insurance companies and for corporations so more profit could be had. There is zero leverage for this program to lower the cost of providing care.

If the SC ever hears these cases it will be a divided vote based on Party Politics. I am sure the everyone in Government loves this program because it gives more jobs for them to hand out.

“I like one-shot kills where possible and prefer to do all my hunting before I shoot.” ..... Elmer Keith